1990s Shoegaze

A primer in some of the most oceanic guitar music ever made, from My Bloody Valentine to Swirlies.

Originally a pejorative term for British dream-pop bands whose members looked down at their feet as they played, shoegaze has since become shorthand for melodic indie rock with a healthy dose of reverb and echo. On this episode of Preset with Todd Osborn, our host zeroes in on the sound’s creative pinnacle in the 1990s, from wall-of-sound miasmas by My Bloody Valentine and Curve to jangle-pop classics by Swirlies and the Boo Radleys. “There are a few good ’80s albums, and there’s a lot of stuff from 2000 on, but the ’90s are my favorite era for this stuff,” Osborn explains. “A lot of my favorites are also hits in this genre, so this mix is more about playing my favorite tracks, and not just trying to just dig up the weirdest unknown ones.”